Understanding How the Website is Set Up

• The Variety Trial Website is a static website (user views a static webpage) allowing fast user interaction. Instead of the website connecting to a database for content, the webpages are generated offline before user interaction. The user is viewing the same thing they would be if the server had just created the page from content except that the page was created ahead of time.
  
  The content in the database is easy to change via a user-friendly database. This allows the ease of updating of a content-driven website without slowing down the server at all. In other words, by taking a step back, you get the best of a database without the worst of a database. This help guide walks you through editing the content in the database and updating the web pages with your changes.
  
  
• There are three main areas of the site. Area 1 is where the user clicks to select one of the 7 regions where Variety Trials are grown. Area 2 is where the summary text for the Agronomy Progress Reports and where the links to the APR Years are located. Area 3 is where the user is first presented with the introduction text. However, when a region from Area 1 is selected, Area 3 becomes the variety trials for that area (see Box 1 below).
  
  Box 1. The three page sections of the Variety Trial Website.
• When editing the site, you will be editing one of three things:
  • Variety Trial Entries for each of the 7 regions
  • APR Years
  • Summary Text and Introductory Text
• The Microsoft Access database (where it all goes down) is located in the PutnamShared directory on the plantsciences network. It is named "Current Variety Database.mdb." The full file path is:
  NOTE: Location not shown for security reasons.
  Box 2. Location of database. Highlight the text above, copy it, and paste it in the address bar in an explorer window.
• The database allows you to update the Variety Trial Website without editing a single line of code by managing:
  • adding, editing, and removing Variety Trials and APR Years to/on/from the web
  • file operations (copying/deleting files to/from the web)
  • updating the correct web pages on the click of a button
• In general, making changes to the Variety Trial Database is a 3 step process:
  • Make changes to the various database entries (these changes are offline).
  • Test your changes (using previews).
  • Update the web with your changes.
  Keep this process in mind when making changes.